Virginia Will Be First To Try Sniper Suspects

November 8, 2002|By Wayne Washington The Boston Globe

WASHINGTON — U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Thursday that two Virginia counties will handle the initial prosecutions of sniper suspects John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo, ending what had been a scuffle over which jurisdiction would get the first crack at the high-profile case.

Muhammad, a 41-year-old Army veteran, will be tried in Prince William County, Va., where he has been indicted on murder charges in the death of Dean Harold Myers on Oct. 9. Malvo, the 17-year-old arrested with Muhammad at a Maryland rest stop on Oct. 24, will be prosecuted on murder charges in Fairfax County, where FBI analyst Linda Franklin was killed on Oct. 14.

Ashcroft made the decision about where the men will be tried because the suspects were being held in federal custody. If Malvo is tried and convicted as an adult, both men could face the death penalty, a prospect that drove the decision on where they would be tried first.

"We believe that the first prosecutions should occur in those jurisdictions that provide the best law, the best facts, and the best range of available penalties," Ashcroft said. "It is appropriate, it is imperative, that the ultimate sanction be available for those who have committed these crimes."

Prosecutors dropped federal extortion charges filed against the men last week. Because murder is a state crime in most cases, the extortion charges were the federal government's only way of pursuing allegations that could have allowed the United States to execute the men if they were convicted.

Muhammad and Malvo were delivered Thursday from federal custody to Virginia authorities, with initial court appearances scheduled this morning.

Less than an hour before Ashcroft made his announcement, law enforcement officials in Atlanta said ballistics tests have linked the sniper suspects to yet another murder -- this one of a man who was shot outside a liquor store in September.

Atlanta officials said Million Woldemarian, a 41-year-old Ethiopian immigrant, was killed just after midnight on Sept. 21 by a shot from the same handgun used to murder a woman in Montgomery, Ala., during a robbery later that day. Alabama officials have charged Muhammad and Malvo with murder in that case.

Investigators have linked or are looking to connect the sniper suspects to murders in Washington state, Arizona, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Prosecutors in many of the states have filed charges against Muhammad and Malvo, but Ashcroft has consistently stressed the jurisdiction that offered the stiffest penalties would get the case first. That ruled out Maryland, where juveniles are not executed and capital punishment laws have been characterized as weak by death penalty advocates.